SkyStream lands NTT deal

SkyStream announced today that it has signed a deal to provide its Mediaplex-20 headend to OnDemandTV, a joint venture of NTT West and Itochu.

The venture, which will roll out IP video over the NTT West fiber network first in the Osaka area, will use a master headend architecture that eventually will provide video feeds to all of Japan. In a second phase of deployment, NTT will use its eastern fiber network and eventually use DSL to provide service to the rest of its territory. OnDemandTV will provide 23 broadcast channels as well as a library of video-on-demand (VOD) movies.

"They launched the initial service on March 9 but that's a VOD network only," said Stuart Ito, Account Director SkyStream. "The next step is to add multi-channel video."

The deal eventually could encompass all 60 million of NTT's existing subscriber base. For Skysteam, demonstrating the ability to handle that scale will be significant as large global carriers begin building similar headends.

"NTT is the largest carrier in the world period, so the potential here is enormous," said Francois Modarresse, director of product management for Skystream. "We're making a statement to the industry that we can work with any telco."

Initially, NTT is using MPEG2 compression in two master headends--one in Osaka and the other in Tokyo.